First, a little good news to off-set the frustration I'm having with getting financial aid for school (drat the economy!) Creating Keepsakes requested a layout for their October issue. Woohoo!

Second, remember my little WC people that I posted about before I left for Florida? They came in the mail today and they're even more awesome in person than they were on the website. I put them up as soon as I walked in the door and I love them! Such a cool and unique accent.

Never again will visitors need to ask where to go!

And third, I finally scrapbooked. I saw this sketch on the PageMaps Blog while I was catching up on my blog roll and I thought it would be great to start my vacation layouts. This one is from the first night there after I met Adorable-Niece-Eraleigh for the first time and we were hanging out with the family.

It's hard to see from my lovely scan, but the top is scalloped and the bottom corners are rounded. Eraleigh is soooo adorable. I miss her already!

And now, time to hit the sack... busy day at work tomorrow!

P.S. I'm bitterly disappointed that Patrick Roy turned down the coach (& GM ?) job with the Avs. Bitterly. We so needed his fire and drive to win. Sigh.

Friday we all went to the Magic Kingdom. I went with Rick, Erin and Eraleigh and Nicole and Brian met up with us for lunch and then we stayed together the rest of the day. Naturally it poured rain again... on our way to meet up with Nicole and Brian, we slogged through ankle deep water! I'm glad Florida got the rain they needed to beat the drought, but did it have to happen while we were there? lol. Anyway, we took Eraleigh on everything (all the big roller coasters were closed for either rain or maintenance) and she seriously loved everything... even Pirates and the Haunted Mansion!

Even with the rain, we had a great time... I loved getting to go on all those rides with Eraleigh and see how much she enjoyed it all.

Finally, on Saturday Rick & Erin went back to the Magic Kingdom and I went back to Epcot with Nicole and Brian (who hadn't been there yet). We FINALLY had a sunny day. In fact, it was hot! We all got sunburned... we were so used to all the rain that we all forgot to bring sunscreen! Nothing major or painful, though... just a little pink :) It was really fun to go through and spend so much time in the world showcase. I can't remember if I did any of that the last time I was there 20ish years ago, but having been to so many of those countries since then it was really fun. I can't believe the level of detail on the reproductions! It was amazing how much it looked like the real thing... in a smaller size, of course.

I was also excited to finally get a chance to ride Soarin'. A friend at work told me I HAD to ride it and given the length of the line and the fact that fast passes were all gone, we figured it must be good! We waited our 70 minutes to get in and we all loved it... so cool!

So that's it... even with all the rain, it was a wonderful trip and I'm so glad I had the chance to go spend time with my family and get to know Adorable-Niece-Eraleigh. I miss that little pumpkin already!

I'm back! I got back yesterday but the early flight from Orlando and the time change on top of a crazy week and a total lack of sleep had me too wiped out to even unpack my bags, let alone go through photos. But now, after a good 12 hours of sleep, some laundry and a trip to the grocery store, I'm ready to dig in! I have way too many photos that I wanted to share, so I'm breaking this into two posts.

First day, Sunday. I got in about 4:30pm and met mom and dad at the airport and then we drove over to the resort to check in. Rick and Erin showed up shortly after and I got to meet Adorable-Niece-Eraleigh for the first time! And believe me, adorable is the right word. She had me wrapped around her little finger in about 1.7 seconds. We got in and then mom, Erin and I headed off to get groceries. While we were out, the rain started and from that point on, we knew we were in for a rough and WET week.

Monday - we decided to hit the Wild Animal Park first. The last time I went to Disney World was probably 20 years ago so I'd never been there. We had lots of fun! Dad zipped around on his scooter leaving us all in the dust, we went on a little safari, checked out the tree of life and saw Finding Nemo the Musical. Oh. And we got wet. lol.

After leaving the park we fixed dinner at the condo and just hung out and played with Eraleigh. As my mom said, she's totally addictive!

Tuesday - this was our "no parK" day. It poured all day long, so that was probably a good decision. Rick, Erin & Eraleigh went to the mall with the M&M store and all the other fun stuff they used to visit when they lived down here and I read for a while and then went out shopping with Mom.

Wednesday - Erin, Rick, Eraleigh & I went to Epcot. The day started out lovely, but we made the mistake of doing all the inside stuff while the weather was nice. We got DRENCHED as we tried to do the world showcase. We still had lots of fun, though. We rode lots of rides in the Land and Sea areas and discovered that Eraleigh loves Moroccan food. Go figure! She was snaking chicken from Erin's plate and downed pita and hummus, couscous, lentils and tabouleh with a huge smile. Oh, and Eraleigh loves fishies... she was totally enraptured by the aquarium after we rode the Nemo ride. The rain in the afternoon just got heavier (as in torrential) so we gave up on trying to explore and headed back around 5.

Nicole and Brian flew in on Wednesday night so we hung out a bit and then hit the sack to get ready to head back to the park the next day.

Thursday - we headed to the Disney Hollywood Studios. Rick and Erin went over early and then I came later with Nicole and Brian. We rode the big kid rides like Star Tours, the Tower of Terror (which is definitely terrifying for someone that hates the feeling of falling!) and the Rock & Roll Rollercoaster which we all loved. Rick and Erin took Eraleigh to the kid-friendly rides and some of the shows but we did meet up for a few minutes towards the end of the day. It was nice to have a mostly rain-free day for once! There was a short downpour, but luckily we were inside eating lunch and it passed quickly.

I meant to spend some time playing in my craft room this weekend, but it just didn't happen. I did, however, treat myself to a sweet double-feature at the movies today... I saw Angels & Demons and Star Trek. Both of them were awesome! Chris Pine as Captain Kirk was definitely enjoyable to watch (and I have to admit, I've loved him since Princes Diaries 2) and I think I need to download the soundtrack for Angels & Demons for sure. So with that, I'm finishing up some laundry and packing my suitcase to get ready to head off to meet the family in Florida. I'm taking my laptop and a card reader, so I might even post pictures from my trip while I'm there! We'll see how that goes. So with that, time to finish packing and get some sleep!

I subscribe to many blogs covering the wide spectrum of friends and family, scrapbooking, cards, stamping, more stamping, more scrapbooking, decorating, hockey, snarky commentary on celebrity fashion and online marketing (we're going to call this "being diverse.") Usually the many postings of awesome home decor that come up on that set of blogs elicit an "oooh, pretty!" response and then I move on. Today, decor8 posted these and I was sucked in. But, seriously... I ask you? How was I supposed to say no to this piece of awesomeness?

I ordered these this morning as soon as I saw them. These are going to ROCK on the door of my downstairs bathroom. Check out the shop... they have lots of patterns. These are hot.

P.S. This is kind of a sweet idea for scrapbooking too... on a smaller scale, that is. Anyone else have the Maya Road guy/girl chipboard shapes?

I've had this layout sitting partially done on my desk for almost a week! I was finally able to finish it up tonight. I love these pictures... especially the close up of those totally pinchable little cheeks and the self-portrait of Rick, Erin and Eraleigh.

I always forget to use chipboard both because it's kind of out of sight in my stash and also because of the extra steps if I don't want to use it raw (have I mentioned that I'm lazy? Because I am.) But I decided I needed to step out of the box a little so I went with the patterned paper and the sanding tools and I'm so glad! This was fun.

And now, back to the count-down until I get to hang with the family and meet this little cutie! Just a few more days and I'm off!

I really love that my family enjoys getting little scrapbooks as gifts... it makes it so much fun for me to make personalized albums for birthdays and holidays. Sometimes when I give a regular gift instead of a scrapbook, they're disappointed! So for Mother's Day this year I decided to make a mini album of Adorable-Niece-Eraleigh for my mom as a Grandma's Brag Book that she could keep on her desk at work. And, since Rick, Erin and Eraleigh are temporarily staying with my parents, I made a copy to send to Erin as well! It was so fun to hear about their surprise... not surprise over the fact that my gift was an album (they guessed that before opening the shipping box!) but surprise that there were two of them! It was almost as easy to make two as one, so it was fun for me to be able to do it :)

I love these 6x6 American Crafts mini albums. I got them at Archivers in the $1.99 spot... that's a deal you can't pass up! These are the completed albums with the cards I made to go with them.

Here are the album pages - lots of these were adapted from other layouts I'd already made for myself, so they'll probably look familiar:

So that's it! I've already scrapbooked all these photos except the ones on the last page (but I have a half-finished layout on my desk using those) but Eraleigh is just so darling that I loved scrapping them all over again.

It's been a long time since I've gone this long between posts when I wasn't traveling or something... I've just been super busy lately! Some of the busy-ness has been work, but I also had the chance this last weekend to go to a retreat that my online (and now in person!) friend April runs. She has a fabulous digital scrapbooking company called Digital Scrapbook Memories and she also started doing retreats last year. I couldn't make it last year because I was at Nicole's wedding, but this year I was in town and I finally got to meet April and three other hummers! I'm not a digi scrapper (but I do a little hybrid now and then) but it was really fun to go and take some classes and learn some great Photoshop tricks.

After classes on Friday night, I went out with Jessie and Barb and we also met up with Beth & Susan Opel and Becky Olsen (sadly, Kelly was too tired to join us, but I'm still psyched that we finally met and chatted a bit!). We hung out at Squatters Pub & Brewery by the hotel... they have yummy sweet potato fries! I was also finally able to start breaking in my new camera and 50mm lens! So fun!

Me, Susan and Barb:Susan, Jessie and Beth:and Jessie, Beth & Becky:We had so much fun! It was great to get to know these awesome ladies. And a shout-out to Mike, our awesome & funny waiter who also never bugged us about paying the check even when they were putting the chairs up. lol.

Saturday I was up bright and early to drive back downtown for the first class of the day at 9am. Barb was teaching and it was so much fun! I learned tons on Saturday and then after the retreat was over, April, Barb & I went out on the town. We started with dinner at the Macaroni Grill with yet another super cool waiter. This time, we had been talking about guy-issues and the waiter came over right at the most heated part. April looked up at him and asked if he wanted to talk about boys and without even missing a beat, he says in a really sassy tone of voice, "well, maybe I do!" then he promptly blushed.

After that we just walked for a while - up the street by the Family History library and then into Temple Square. Since Barb had been to SLC multiple times and had never seen the temple, she really wanted to go see it. We went through the visitor center and then out by the temple where some cute sister missionaries took a nice photo for us (me, Barb in the middle and April):

From there we went into the Tabernacle. Since Barb is a lead Alto in her home choir, she wanted to see that... she said it was like choir mecca. lol. We were actually able to catch the end of an organ concert recording which was unbelievable and then they did the pin dropping demonstration to show off the acoustics. Totally cool! Then we went over to the Joseph Smith Memorial Building for the awesome interior and the view from the 10th floor.

From there we walked out and around by the Church office building and then back to the reflecting pool before heading back to the hotel. From there, April drove us up through the Avenues and to a fabulous overlook of the city where we could see the whole valley. It was gorgeous! Unfortunately I didn't get any good pictures since I don't have a tripod yet, but I think Barb did so I'll have to steal from her :D

Anyway, yesterday after church I pretty much crashed! But my mom and Erin got the little mini albums of Eraleigh that I made them for Mother's Day and I'll try and post that tomorrow... they turned out so cute!

P.S. Go Caps! I was bummed that they went down 3-2 in the series with Pittsburg, but they forced a game 7 tonight. Crossing my fingers that they kick some Penguin butt... I want to see the Caps in the finals! (knock on wood.)

So most of my scrapbook layouts are about me, but it's usually stuff I do or places I go... I don't put a ton on my layouts that really talks about who I am. So I decided to be a total copy-cat and do one of those layouts that I've seen everywhere for the last year or so that just lists different things about who I am at this point in my life. I used a picture from my 34th birthday and just went with it.

I love, love, LOVE this Basic Grey Urban Prairie line.. such cute patterns, great colors and fun stamps! The chipboard is glittery - Thickers from American Crafts, and the flower is made of different layers of Prima, blue tulle and some liquid pearls. Oh... and my pose in the photo? I was totally making fun of Nicole who always poses like that in birthday photos. lol.

Just got back from a fun dinner with Steph, Amber, Rae, Rae's friend Sarah and Amber's friends Desiree and Chuck. Yummy Italian food up at the Gateway and hours of fun conversation. I'm super glad I sucked it up and went into the city tonight! I think we quite possibly scandalized the waiter but I'm sure he'll get over it. lol. Rae and I were also swapping book suggestions so hopefully I'll have some fun new stuff to read here soon!

Now, I'm trying to settle in and make some progress on my Mother's Day project before bed. Ugh! Why did I procrastinate so long? In the spirit of putting things off a bit longer, here's another layout. This one from our trip to Cancun two years ago (I can't believe it's already been two years!!!) when Nicole and I snorkeled through the Underground River in Xcaret. It wasn't the greatest snorkling, but the novelty of doing it in Mayan ruins still made it pretty cool.

I can't believe it, but Adorable-Niece-Eraleigh was 10 months old yesterday! Erin posted some darling pictures that will definitely find their way onto a layout, but in the meantime I grabbed one super cute close-up to put into the little mini-album I've been making. I started this a few weeks ago and have been waiting for a "10 months" picture to post. I've just been taking one photo each month so that as you flip through the pages, you can really see how much Eraleigh is changing! I think this is going on my desk at work until it's time to add the next photo.

I love watching the development of her gorgeous smile. She's just so cute! Also, for anyone who's interested in how I made it, the album itself was super easy. I used a template that I found here and made the cover from some fun American Crafts Moda Bella paper... the inside pages are plain white cardstock and I used the Papertrey Ink Guidelines 2 set for the backgrounds on all the pages. The closure is done with a Basic Grey magnet set.

Now I'm off to try and work on another project I've been procrastinating on for Mother's Day. Since I have to ship my package off this week, though, I decided I was cutting it close enough. Hopefully I can make some good progress today. I finally picked, edited and printed all the photos which is the part I hate, so now it should just roll right along!

Work got super busy again this week so I'm definitely ready for the weekend! At least a busy week goes by more quickly, right?

Just posting a recent layout from my last trip to Paris with Mel, Vic & Dustin. We went back to the Eiffel Tower again on our last night there to just hang out for a while... I happened to be standing there taking pictures when the Tower started to light up for the evening so I got some fun sequential shots of that.

I really love that last one... especially with the vignetting action from Pioneer Woman.

Speaking of photos... my new camera came! I got the batteries all charged up and pulled out my old camera bag and lenses and I'm ready to go. I'll have to see if I can find some time this weekend to go out and play with it so I'm up to speed on how to use it before going to Disney in a few weeks. Fun, fun!